


Shit happens

by Zoadgo



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: (but there's not an emphasis on that aspect), Canon Divergent, Comfort, F/F, Fingering, Semi-Public Sex, Smut, post 4x12
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-26
Updated: 2017-05-26
Packaged: 2018-11-05 02:41:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11004285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zoadgo/pseuds/Zoadgo
Summary: Raven would rather not spend five years in space with Bellamy picking a fight with Echo every day. Standing up for Echo becomes talking to her, which becomes understanding her and what she's going through. From there, it's a very short step to kissing her.





	Shit happens

“I was only trying to save my people.” Echo responds to something Raven wasn’t paying attention to, and Raven looks up to see Bellamy and Echo facing off, with Clarke looking on in tired concern.  
   
“I don’t care.” Bellamy advances on Echo with evident rage, and Raven sighs, rolling her eyes as the same old argument springs up in the informal dining room once again.  
   
“God, Bellamy, give it a rest.” She hops off of her perch and walks towards the pair, situating herself solidly between them, back to Echo. “And back off.”  
   
“Raven, she killed-”  
   
“I know how many of our people she killed! I knew them, Bell. But how many of her people have we killed, huh? How many times did I build bombs for you?” Raven crosses her arms over her chest and thanks whatever deities are listening that Echo remains silent. Raven might be able to talk some sense into Bellamy, but if Echo talks it’ll all be over.  
   
“You’re taking her side? Really, Raven?” Bellamy steps back, shaking his head, and Raven takes a deep breath through clenched teeth.  
   
“No, I’m saying that sides are stupid. We all have to live together here, we’ve all killed people, we need to stop pretending any of us is any better than each other.” Raven keeps her voice carefully calm, won’t let her words be dismissed as emotional. Bellamy stares at her for a moment before turning away to look at Clarke.  
   
“Can you believe this?”   
   
“Bellamy…” Clarke’s voice is soft, persuasive, “She has a point.”  
   
Bellamy looks as if someone just slapped him in the face, throwing his hands up in defeat. “Fine, whatever, I guess I’m the only one who cares-”  
   
Bellamy continues ranting as he leaves the room, and Clarke shoots Raven an apologetic look before setting out after him. It’s only when Raven and Echo are alone in the room together that Raven finally uncrosses her arms and relaxes with a drawn out breath.  
   
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Echo says, and Raven nearly jumps out of her skin. She had forgotten how close Echo was behind her.  
   
“Don’t worry about it.” Raven chuckles lightly, turning to face Echo and taking a small step away.  
   
“No, you really shouldn’t have.” Echo looks as serious as she always does, frowning slightly at Raven. “There’s no reason for you to have sided with me over your people.”  
   
“Echo, I meant what I said to Bellamy. If we’re going to have sides up here, it’s going to be a hell of a five years. I backed you up because Bellamy was being an ass; if you’re in the wrong next time, I’m not going to,” Raven explains. She hopes Echo can get it, and that Clarke or some of the others can convince Bellamy of the same thing. Honestly, being at each other’s throats for five years is not a prospect Echo wants to face, she doesn’t know how Bellamy thinks he’s going to have the energy to actively hate Echo every day.  
   
Echo raises her chin slightly, regarding Raven thoughtfully. She’s silent for a long while, long enough that Raven begins to feel uncomfortable, but eventually she nods. “I see.”  
   
Raven keeps most of her victory celebration over that internal, instead simply smiling at Echo. “You know, when someone saves your ass, you typically say ‘thank you’.”  
   
“You didn’t-” Echo’s eyes narrow, defensive and painfully serious.  
   
“Relax.” Raven waves off her objection, limping over to a chair in order to sit and take some of her weight off of her leg. “I’m just teasing you.”  
   
Echo remains standing a few feet away, apparently contemplating Raven’s words. When she comes to whatever conclusion she does, silent as ever about her thoughts, she crosses over to Raven and takes a seat next to her. Something inside of Raven does a little happy jig at the fact that Echo chose to sit next to her, rather than storming off. Everyone else seems to be afraid of her, and Echo seems to enjoy that. It makes Raven feel a little bit special that Echo would permit her to tease her.  
   
“There wasn’t much teasing in the Queensguard.” Echo elaborates, and Raven chalks that up as a third win; Echo listening to her, Echo staying, and now Echo sharing facts about herself. It feels different from any interaction Raven’s had with the warrior, and she realizes this is actually the first conversation she’s seen Echo have. Everyone only seems to talk to her when they need something, and even then as little as possible.   
   
“No? You guys didn’t play pranks on each other? Joke around while you were training?” Raven queries, thinking back on her own colleagues. Their job was serious and important, but that didn’t mean they had to be. Although every Azgeda warrior Raven had ever seen seemed to be made of particularly stern stone, she guesses she always assumed they were different in their homeland.  
   
“Not those of us who made it through training. Queen Nia had no time for jokes, and her will was our livelihood.” Echo speaks so plainly about it, yet it seems horribly sad to Raven.  
   
“What about before the Queensguard?” Raven asks, not about to miss out on a chance to learn more about Echo, even if it’s sad.  
   
Echo shrugs, “Perhaps, but I can’t remember it clearly. I was a child when Nia chose me from my village.”  
   
“A child? I thought…” Raven trails off, realizing a lot of what she thought had just been blind assumptions, applying her own experiences to fill her void of knowledge. “Why did Nia choose you?”  
   
“She saw me fighting an older child in the streets.” A hint of a fond smile creeps onto Echo’s features, and it suddenly strikes Raven how beautiful she actually is. She’s never seen Echo do anything other than frown before, or look entirely impassive. “He was trying to take my food. I lost, but I ruined the food in the process so he didn’t get what he wanted. Then I got back up and spat blood right at the feet of the Queen of Azgeda. I guess she liked what she saw.”  
   
“That’s-” Raven cuts herself off before saying ‘horrible’, seeing that Echo clearly enjoys the memory. She tries to see it from Echo’s point of view; a child, clearly not a prodigy in fighting yet being raised in a warrior culture, being picked off of the streets to serve the Queen herself. She guesses she can see it, why that might have left a positive impression on Echo, so she changes her sentence. “Impressive.”  
   
“I thought so. I spent my entire life trying to live up to whatever she saw in me that day.” Echo’s expression darkens quickly as she looks around the room. “And here I am, outcast and in space.”  
   
Raven doesn’t know what to say to that, what she could possibly say to comfort someone so entirely out of their element, so silence grows between them. Not uncomfortable, precisely, but definitely a palpable presence. Raven worries her lower lip, wondering how she didn’t stop to consider Echo before this. Of course they didn’t have time for it, with one disaster after another piling up, but still… She feels that she should have thought more about Echo, if only because there are so few of them to consider now. But no one was concerned for Echo, only over her and what she might do; none of them cared about her comfort.  
   
“Hey, want to see something?” Raven breaks the silence, an idea dawning on her. Echo looks at her skeptically, but nods slowly.  
   
“Sure.”  
   
“Come on then.” Raven pushes herself to her feet with a grin and sets off at a brisk pace through the halls. Well, a brisk pace for her. Echo keeps up with no effort at all, and Raven wonders if she should try adjusting the artificial gravity. Not shutting it off, of course, but maybe reducing it just to make walking a little easier for her. But of course that would make it all the more difficult when they return to Earth, so Raven files the idea away for daydreams.  
   
There are viewing ports all along the halls, and Raven passes them without a spare glance until they reach a corner that’s all window, a clear barrier between them and the great blackness of space. She wants to be out there, yearns for a spacewalk on a primal level. Soon, she reminds herself. They’re going to need lots of maintenance over the next five years, she’ll get her fair share of spacewalks.  
   
“Here.” Raven walks up to the window, beckoning Echo to her. Echo approaches warily, looking at the edges where the glass meets the metal with obvious doubt. “It’s perfectly safe, don’t worry.”  
   
“I’m not,” Echo says, and absolutely nothing in her tone or mannerisms convinces Raven of that. Raven keeps that to herself, however, smothering a smirk at the mighty and intimidating Azgeda spy being nervous because of space.  
   
“Of course. Now,” Raven gestures out into the black, towards the beautiful sphere of blue, green, and white before them, “that’s Earth. And that,” Raven moves closer to Echo, looking over her shoulder to make sure she’s pointing out the right area on Earth’s surface from Echo’s perspective. “is where we came from.”  
   
Echo doesn’t respond, but the trepidation fades from her features. After a moment, she takes a step forward and places a hand on the glass, right over where Raven had been pointing.  
   
“You’ll go back someday. You’ll get to be Azgeda again.” Raven offers, and on an impulse places her hand on Echo’s shoulder, over the thick black lines of her tattoo. Echo doesn’t reject the touch, but her hand falls from the window to hang at her side.  
   
“...They won’t have me. Roan banished me in his final act as King, Octavia will have told them all by now.”  
   
“And when they’re rebuilding everything, without a King or Queen to guide them? They’re your people Echo, they need you. They’ll come around.”  
   
“I hope you’re right.” Echo’s voice carries a hint of her sorrow over the loss of her people, and Raven rubs her thumb against Echo’s skin. She studies the warrior’s tattoo, and for some reason it only strikes her as odd in that moment.  
   
“Why do you have a tattoo?” Raven blurts out, her curiosity changing the subject abruptly, “Azgeda usually have scars, right?”  
   
“A sacrifice for my Queen,” Echo says, the words sounding like a quote rather than her own explanation. She pauses for a moment before continuing, “The Queensguard needed to be unrecognizable as Azgeda as most of our activities were… frowned upon by the other kru. If any of us were caught, we would deny any attachment to Azgeda, and our Queen would say she had no knowledge of us.”  
   
Echo takes a deep breath, and Raven can feel her muscles tense. Her lips pull into a hard line as she continues, voice carefully devoid of emotion, “My Queen had a mission for me, one that took me away from Azgeda lands for a long time. I needed to infiltrate Trikru, to gather information and possibly take out a target. But to get close enough to learn what I needed, I had to _be_ Trikru. I learned their accent, I wore their clothes, but there’s one more thing that marks them from the other kru.”  
   
“The tattoos,” Raven says, finally understanding.  
   
“Each kru has their own style. I found a Trikru artist and… persuaded him to tattoo me. Got caught by the Mountain Men before I could get the information anyway.” Echo reaches up and scratches at the lower edge of her tattoo, not looking away from the view of Earth below them.  
   
Raven realizes the importance of the marking with a slowly growing weight in her stomach. The tattoos, the scars, they mark who your people are. And Echo had not only chosen to avoid taking up that claim in order to protect her people and serve them better, she had taken another kru’s mark because it was asked of her. She had given everything in her life to her people, and yet someone looking at her would see her as Trikru, not Azgeda. And now, to be banished and living with Skaikru… Raven can only begin to imagine the pain Echo must be feeling, must have felt at every point in which her devotion to her people turned out not to be enough for them to accept her.  
   
“That’s awful. I’m sorry,” Raven says, heartfelt, and Echo brushes Raven’s hand off of her shoulder abruptly.  
   
“I don’t need your pity.” Echo bites out the words, turning to glare at Raven.  
   
“Not pity, just… That’s a shitty situation. God, this is all a shitty situation for you. The least I can do is say sorry on behalf of the universe, or something.” Raven gets it, people having pity on you for something that doesn’t affect how badass you are is the worst. But what else is she supposed to say, with everything she’s now learning about Echo?  
   
“Did anyone do that for you?” Echo asks, her cold anger slipping away in a heartbeat, and Raven guesses that means she accepts Raven’s explanation.  
   
“Do what for me?” She asks, confused.  
   
“Apologize. For the universe.” Echo reaches out and brushes her knuckles against Raven’s knee, and Raven tries to imagine she can feel it. “For this.”  
   
“The guy who shot me did.” Raven shrugs, remembering Murphy’s apology. It was odd when he’d said sorry, not just because seeing genuine emotion from Murphy is strange. She’d realized at that point that she didn’t really blame Murphy for what happened to her, despite thinking she did and hating him for a long time. He’d been shooting wildly, it had been dumb luck more than anything malicious. Sure, if he’d never fired at all she wouldn’t have gotten shot and it was definitely his fault, but she hates the whims of fate more than the guy who sprayed bullets in panic.  
   
“You were shot?” Echo asks. Of course she wouldn’t know, none of them would have told her.  
   
“Yeah.” Raven turns around and hikes up the hem of her shirt, shivering slightly as she exposes the scars on her lower back. “That’s where they took the bullet out. No painkillers, no anaesthetic. It sucked.”  
   
Echo’s fingers brush over the skin around Raven’s surgery scars and over the repaired skin itself, and she can definitely feel that touch. An entirely different sort of shiver runs through her at the surprisingly soft exploration.  
   
“Did you kill him?” Echo asks, her fingers leaving Raven’s back, and Raven misses her touch immediately. She tugs her shirt back down and turns around to face Echo again with a small chuckle.  
   
“No, otherwise we’d be short a set of hands here,” Raven says, and then elaborates at Echo’s confused look, “It was Murphy who shot me.”  
   
“I’ll kill him for you,” Echo says, entirely calm, and Raven grabs her shoulder as she goes to walk off, presumably to hunt down Murphy and end him. Raven shakes her head with a smile.  
   
“No need, we’ve moved past it.”  
   
“You’re sure?” Echo searches Raven with her gaze, like when Abby would check to see if Raven was lying to her about her pain; doubtful and protective. “I could make it look like an accident.”  
   
“It’s fine, I kicked his ass.” Raven explains, and Echo nods, apparently satisfied. “I mean, it wasn’t hard, he’s a scrawny bastard.”  
   
“You’re a warrior, Raven. You would have beaten him anyway.” Echo states with confidence, and a warm glow rushes through Raven at that. She’s always been a genius and a badass, sometimes a fool, but a warrior? She could get used to being called that.  
   
“Call me that again,” Raven requests, indulging herself. A small smile creeps onto Echo’s lips, and _god_ she is gorgeous when she smiles.  
   
“You’re a warrior. Battle scars, victories, and all.” Echo obliges, and Raven smiles, revelling in the way it feels. Being a genius is fun and all, but ever since the injury it has seemed like a way to compensate for everything lacking in her, a way for her to not be a burden. But being a fighter and her leg being a battle scar means she has nothing to compensate for, nothing to be ashamed of.  
   
Raven chases that happy glow, shifting her hand from Echo’s shoulder to the back of her neck and leaning in. To her delight, Echo meets her halfway, her hands seeking Raven’s hips, calloused fingers touching skin above the waistband of her pants and sending a thrill through Raven’s nerves. And then their lips are crashing together, and Echo’s are soft under Raven’s, sliding silk in contrast to the sharp bite of her teeth which Echo doesn’t seem to be afraid to show. Not that Raven objects, mind you, she moans into the kiss as Echo pulls her lower lips between her teeth.  
   
Raven’s hands find their way into Echo’s hair, tangle in it as Echo’s lips leave hers in order to make their way down Raven’s jaw to her neck. She nips lightly at the skin there, just enough to cause shocks to jump through Raven, not enough to cause actual pain. Raven responds with sharp tugs to Echo’s hair, which are met with favourable groans.  
   
Echo slips her hands under the back of Raven’s shirt, mapping over her skin and toying with the waistband of her pants. Raven’s breath catches in her throat, and her knee buckles on her at the worst possible time.  
   
“Shit-” She barks out, prepared to fall and take Echo - and the moment - with her. But despite her knee failing entirely, she hardly shifts, Echo shifting her grip to catch Raven, pulling her flush against her in the process.   
   
“You okay?” Echo leans back, holding Raven around the waist with one arm and brushing hair behind Raven’s ear with her free hand.  
   
“Yeah, it’s just my stupid knee.” Raven’s cheeks burn with shame at her own weakness, but Echo simply smiles and kisses her, softer and quicker than the last last time.  
   
“Not a problem. Here.” Echo turns them around in a heartbeat and carefully backs Raven up against the window. When Raven’s back contacts the insulated material, Echo presses forward and lifts Raven’s bad leg, bending her own leg in order to rest it on top of her thigh. It takes all the weight off of Raven’s leg, and she sighs in relief. “Better?”  
   
“Much,” Raven admits, communicating some of her thanks with her lips on Echo’s. And then Echo rolls her hips forward, friction muted by their clothing but still sending a wave of pleasure through Raven. “God, _much_ better.”  
   
“Good.” Echo practically purrs the word, and Raven grabs her hips, pulling her impossibly closer to prompt her to repeat the motion. Echo seems more than happy to oblige, and Raven lets her head fall back against the window with a sigh.  
   
Echo’s mouth seeks Raven’s neck again, and she doesn’t mind in the slightest as Echo soothes light bites with her tongue. It’s not hard enough to leave more than faint marks which will fade in a few hours, and Raven appreciates that. Not that she really minds hickeys most of the time, but, well… People are bound to notice and ask questions when there’s so few of them.  
   
Raven slides her hands up under Echo’s shirt, feeling smooth skin seamed with scars. She may not have the delicate patterned scars of an Azgeda, but there’s no question about the life Echo has lived. Raven imagines a few of the long scars on her back are from a lash, and she wonders at the story behind them for a moment. A very short moment at that, because as she discovers them, Echo begins working at the fly of Raven’s pants, and suddenly there are far more pressing matters.  
   
“Okay?” Echo breathes the question into Raven’s ear, and Raven is thrilled to hear that she seems as out of breath as Raven herself.   
   
“ _God_ yes,” Raven responds enthusiastically. Echo separates their bodies only enough to gain the room necessary to slide her hand into Raven’s pants, cupping her for a moment before sliding a finger through her folds and drawing a gasp from Raven. She repeats the motion a few times, and Raven groans through her teeth, “Echo, don’t tease me.” It’s been far too long since Raven last got laid for her to have the patience for teasing.  
   
“You teased me earlier,” Echo points out, circling her finger around Raven’s clit once before removing the needed touch.  
   
“That was different!” Raven protests, before letting out a needy moan, “Please, Echo.”  
   
“Say it again,” Echo mutters, her lips against Raven’s ear as she continues her torturously slow exploration of Raven’s pussy. The tone of her voice sends a delightful shiver through Raven.  
   
“Please, Echo,” Raven draws the words out, lets Echo hear exactly how bad she wants this. And finally, Echo obliges, sinking two fingers into Raven and cupping the heel of her hand over her clit. Raven moans as Echo rocks her hand within her, gripping at Echo’s shoulders and not feeling at all bad about the fact that she’s probably leaving nail marks there. “Shit, yes, thank you.”  
   
“You make so much noise,” Echo interjects into Raven’s rambling, and she swallows down another expletive with effort as Echo hits a particularly good spot within her.  
   
“Sorry, I can - ah! - be quieter,” Raven pants out, grinding into Echo’s hand as her climax grows nearer, doubting her owns words as she says them.  
   
“No,” Echo slides a third fingers into Raven and Raven can’t hold back her moan at that, “I like it.”  
   
“Shit - okay,” Raven groans, allowing herself all her moans and pants and sighs as Echo soundly finger fucks her, her other hand gripping Raven’s hip tightly. Raven speaks in an incoherent jumble of curses and prayers as tension builds within her.  
   
“Fuck, Echo!” Raven cries out as her orgasm breaks, rolling through her in rapid waves. Echo continues to fuck her rapidly through the peak of it, then slows her motions and coaxes Raven back down from her high, until Raven lets out a groan as she stops clenching around Echo’s fingers. “God that was good.”  
   
“Good,” Echo says, kissing Raven slowly and decadently as she pulls her hand out of Raven’s pants. She does them back up, and then she leans away and licks her fingers, and _shit_ if that isn’t absurdly hot to Raven.  
   
“We should get somewhere more private,” Raven says, her eyes fixed on Echo’s lips as they wraps around her fingers, “And more horizontal, so I can repay the favour. As soon as my legs work again.”  
   
Echo drops her hand from her mouth with a grin, and next thing she knows, Raven is swept up in Echo’s arms. She supposes she could feel offended at being carried, but instead Raven finds herself amazed at Echo’s strength, running her hands over her biceps and shoulders, feeling the steely muscles beneath the skin.  
   
“Eager much?” Raven jokes, and Echo smiles down at her.  
   
“Wouldn’t you be?”  
   
Raven can’t argue with that, so she kisses Echo again and tastes herself on her lips. Yes, she’ll definitely repay her. And then some, if Raven gets what she wants.

**Author's Note:**

> I have no fucking clue why I started shipping Echo and Raven, but I do and it's beautiful. I wrote this after 4x12, so apologies for the differences from canon in it. Also apologies for the smut because, as always, I am terrible at it (but trying to get better). Eternal thanks to [coldsaturn](http://coldsaturn.tumblr.com) for being the best beta a crackshipper could ask for!
> 
> Come talk to me [on tumblr!](http://jonnmurphy.tumblr.com) and thanks for commenting/reading/leaving kudos <3


End file.
